Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak says the movements of a missing plane were consistent with a deliberate act by someone who turned the jet back across Malaysia and onwards to the west. Sarah Toms reports.

MALAYSIAN authorities are examining an elaborate flight simulator taken from the home of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who flew the missing jetliner.

Police searched his home after it was established that whoever flew off with the Boeing 777 had intimate knowledge of the cockpit and knew how to avoid detection when navigating around Asia.

Satellite data suggested the plane flew for at least 7 ½ hours — more than six hours after the last radio contact — and that it could have reached north into Central Asia or deep into the southern Indian Ocean, posing awesome challenges for efforts to recover the plane and flight data recorders vital to solving the mystery of what happened on board.

Given that the northern route would take the plane over countries with busy airspace, a southern path is seen as much more likely. The southern Indian Ocean is one of the most remote stretches of water in the world, the third deepest and has little radar coverage. The wreckage might take months — or longer — to find, or might never be located.

Malaysia’s Transport Ministry said today that police searched the homes of both the pilot and the co-pilot on Saturday. It didn’t say whether this was the first time they had done this since the plane went missing eight days ago.

Confirmation of the missing Malaysian airliner being deliberately diverted has sharpened scrutiny of the passengers and cockpit crew, with police searching the pilot’s home.

Prime Minister Najib Razak said in a statement tonight that: “Officers spoke to family members of the pilot and experts are examining the pilot’s flight simulator. On 15 March, the police also searched the home of the co-pilot.”

Yesterday, he said satellite and radar data clearly indicated the plane’s automated communications were disabled and it turned away from its intended path and flew on for hours.

“These movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane,” he said, adding that investigators had consequently “refocused their investigation into crew and passengers”.

The search of the pilots’ private homes comes after an Australian television report broadcast an interview with a young South African woman who said Fariq and another pilot colleague invited them into the cockpit of a flight from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur in 2011.

Malaysia Airlines said it was “shocked” by the report but could not verify the claims.

The son of a high-ranking official in the public works department of a Malaysian state, Fariq joined Malaysia Airlines when he was 20.

He is a mild-mannered “good boy” who regularly visited his neighbourhood mosque outside Kuala Lumpur, said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader.

The far more seasoned Zaharie joined MAS in 1981 and had logged 18,365 hours of flying time.

Malaysian media reports quoted colleagues calling Zaharie a “superb pilot”, who also served as an examiner, authorised by the Malaysian Civil Aviation Department, to conduct simulator tests for pilots.

Based on the latest chilling developments in the search for MH370 it seems that at the time someone told air traffic control “all right, good night”, evil was already lurking in the plane and had turned off its Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, known as ACARS.

WAS THERE A 9/11-STYLE HIJACK ON BOARD?

The Malaysian prime minister’s announcement opened a whole new avenue of speculation including an attempted 9/11-style attack, AFP reported.

The 9/11 hijackers had turned off the transponders of three of the four planes that were commandeered. Transponders transmit data on a plane’s location to air traffic controllers.

MH370’s transponder was manually shut off, Najib said.

Final satellite communication with the Boeing 777, scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, came more than six-and-a-half hours after it vanished from civilian radar at 1:30am on March 8.

That would equate with the time Malaysia Airlines has said the plane would have run out of fuel.

Under increased suspicion ... Co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid (on right) invited these two passengers into the cockpit on a previous international flight.Source: Supplied

The whole passenger manifest is likely to be re-examined in the light of the new revelations.

If hijackers are suspected, then the glare of suspicion will fall again on two passengers who boarded with EU passports stolen in Thailand.

Interpol had identified the two men as Iranians: Seyed Mohammed Reza Delavar, who used a stolen Italian passport, and Pouria Nourmohammadi, who used an Austrian one.

Interpol chief Ronald Noble said last Tuesday the men were thought to be illegal immigrants who had travelled from Doha to Kuala Lumpur in a roundabout bid to reach Europe.

There has been no indication yet of any possible terrorist involvement.

Mr Najib’s grave statement ruled out previous scenarios included a sudden mid-air explosion, catastrophic equipment or structural failure, or a crash into the South China Sea.

Malaysia Airlines last night issued a new statement.

“Further to the statement by the Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak earlier today into the ongoing search for Flight MH370, Malaysia Airlines has shared all available information with the relevant authorities since the moment we learned that the aircraft had disappeared, in the early hours of Saturday 8th March. This includes the very first indications that MH370 may have remained airborne for several hours after contact was lost, which the Prime Minister referred to today.

“This is truly an unprecedented situation, for Malaysia Airlines and for the entire aviation industry. There has never been a case in which information gleaned from satellite signals alone could potentially be used to identify the location of a missing commercial airliner. Given the nature of the situation and its extreme sensitivity, it was critical that the raw satellite signals were verified and analysed by the relevant authorities so that their significance could be properly understood. This naturally took some time, during which we were unable to publicly confirm their existence.

“We were well aware of the ongoing media speculation during this period, and its effect on the families of those on board. Their anguish and distress increases with each passing day, with each fresh rumour, and with each false or misleading media report. Our absolute priority at all times has been to support the authorities leading the multinational search for MH370, so that we can finally provide the answers which the families and the wider community are waiting for.

“We remain absolutely committed to sharing confirmed information with family members and the wider public in a fully open and transparent manner. However given the nature of the situation, the importance of validating new information before it is released into the public domain is paramount.

“Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families of the 227 passengers and our 12 Malaysia Airlines colleagues and friends on board flight MH370. They will remain at the centre of every action we take as a company, as they have been since MH370 first disappeared.”

Distraught families of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane ask whether they could have been given information earlier after watch a briefing by the Malaysian prime minister from a Beijing hotel. Sarah Toms reports.

A NOTE ABOUT RELEVANT ADVERTISING: We collect information about the content (including ads) you use across this site and use it to make both advertising and content more relevant to you on our network and other sites.